Many Point of Sales (POS) systems have been around for a long time and so have hospitality operating systems. The problem with most of these systems is that they did not provide a full and complete method to operate a hospitality environment such as a restaurant. One problem that these systems have had is that they were totally proprietary and could not be run on multiple hardware platforms. Another problem is that they were written for proprietary or obscure operating platforms and thus could not be easily modified or used with existing software or hardware. These systems also did not provide an integrated system from laying out the tables to assigning the tables to wait staff, assigning orders to persons seated at the table, and the ability to integrate multiple payment options.
These systems were also cumbersome to use since they used cryptic keyboard codes and generic graphics. These systems were merely order takers and did not provide real time integration of time and data. The previous systems did not control how orders were timed when sent to be prepared. The person placing the order still had to estimate and guess when the order should be sent and the person preparing the food had to estimate or guess when to begin the food so that they would be ready at the appropriate time.